Da Cove Health Bar & Café

Da Cove Health Bar & Café trades at 3045 Monsarrat Avenue, on the stretch running up from Kapahulu towards Diamond Head, and operated for years as Diamond Head Cove Health Bar before shortening the name. The daytime business is a health café — açaí bowls, fruit smoothies, wild-caught ahi salads, wraps and sandwiches — but what earns it a place in an alcohol-free guide is that it is one of the only venues on Oʻahu with 'awa written into a standing daily menu rather than served at a dedicated kava bar. That matters practically: it means a visitor can try kava in a bright, food-first room at two in the afternoon without walking into a nakamal, which is a lower step for someone unfamiliar with it.

The kava is sold plainly. An ice-cold single is $6 for eight ounces and a double $12 for sixteen, and the house 'awa coconut smoothie — kava blended with coconut milk, maple syrup and banana, $11 for sixteen ounces — is the version most first-timers order, because the coconut and banana carry the earthy, faintly bitter root flavour that puts people off a straight shell. A chalkboard wall in the café explains what kava is and what it is supposed to do, which is a rare piece of honesty in a category where a lot of venues let customers guess. The plain statement is worth repeating: kava contains no alcohol and Da Cove serves none, but it is psychoactive and mildly sedating, and it is not the same proposition as a mocktail. The café opens daily from 9am to 7pm, and runs live music on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 8pm to 10pm, which extends it past café hours into something closer to a social room. Between the food, the hours and the fact that nothing on the premises contains alcohol, it functions as one of the more flexible alcohol-free options on this side of town.